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When I first started looking at photography as a hobby, I spent a lot of time looking at different aspects of it – portraiture, landscapes, stock/micro stock photography, etc. One of the sites I visited at the time at had a series of photographs by Mark Fearon taken using a camera suspended on a kite. I loved the unique angle of the shots but there was no way I was ever going to connect my camera to something so….. temperamental. (Sorry Mark, I can’t find the site any more, but if you send me a link, I’ll add it)

With the rise of consumer drones and the improvements in image quality and ease of use with these platforms, I guess it was only a matter of time before I picked one up. I’d looked a a bunch of different options from self build through to Octocopters, but eventually settled on a DJI Phantom.

DJI seems to have the market quite well covered in terms of semi-professional/high quality drones for video and photography folks and certainly the one I bought could be confidently flown by anyone with a few minutes training (my 10 year old daughter was able to get the basics in moments!). A lot of these models come with GPS stabilisation and a host of advanced flight features like Return To Home and Point of Interest, which makes the flight aspect simple, allowing you to concentrate on the image(s).

Road to Dungloe, Easter 2016

Over Easter I finally managed to take it to Donegal and use it in anger for the first time. I was incredibly impressed by the output of it, especially given it was a windy day.

Donegal Coastline. Easter 2016

As with other aspects of photography, there is a lot to learn and I suspect there’ll be a lot of images that just don’t work. It’ll be an interesting thing to learn over the coming moths/years.

One other interesting aspect of the whole experience is the video output from the drone – probably the thing people are using them the most for. Prior to Easter I’d have proudly told you I didn’t know how to turn on the video mode on my SLR, but some of the footage captured on the Phantom is stunning. I’ll share some soon.